


King Me

by fourteenlines



Category: Farscape
Genre: Chess, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22253164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourteenlines/pseuds/fourteenlines
Summary: Beer and battlefields without blood, and mercifully little serious conversation.
Relationships: John Crichton/Aeryn Sun
Kudos: 7





	King Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Aeryn Ficathon, organized by the fantabulous Thea. I wrote for Whitelight, who requested John/Aeryn, board games, beer, Chiana, season one, and John's IASA uniform. Five out of six ain't bad, I hope. Set between "A Human Reaction" and "Through the Looking Glass."
> 
> Originally posted circa 2004.

Aeryn remembered the feeling of John's hands ghosting over her thighs. A strange sensation crawled up her spine when she thought of it, and she couldn't say whether it was fear or affection or lust, or some other, less definable thing.

John was unusually quiet the day they came back from the false Earth, and he would tell her about what happened after they got separated only in the vaguest terms. The morning after, he was back to his usual self: baffling, enthusiastic, annoying, yet somehow aggravatingly attractive. She assumed that was the end of it. Aeryn was more than willing to leave it as it was, rather than _talking_ about it for endless arns. Arns that could be spent doing one of the many needful things aboard Moya. Like...scrubbing the docking bay floor. Or counting DRDs.

Still, once in awhile she'd get the sense that there was something underlying that hyperactive curiosity of his. As a Peacekeeper, she was familiar with false bravado, even if she didn't like to admit it.

A few solar days after the incident on the false Earth, they made a stop on a commerce planet. John decided to stay onboard Moya, so Aeryn stayed too. Because she wanted to keep an eye on him, of course. Not because she wanted to spend time with him, nothing like that. D'Argo grumbled about taking Chiana with him, saying that taking a thief into a crowded marketplace was inviting trouble, so Zhaan volunteered to go along to watch over her. Rygel, of course, was off looking for Hynerian delicacies at reduced prices.

Aeryn casually leaned against the door of John's quarters. He looked all right, but he was busy dabbing a pungent red concoction onto a series of Prowler-engine stabilizer discs, which he'd probably swiped from her stores in the maintenance bay.

"You're getting as bad as Rygel. Or Chiana, come to think of it."

He looked up and grinned at her. "Got the paint from Zhaan, too."

"I assume you asked _her,_ first?"

"Course. She had to mix it for me."

Aeryn grinned at him, and assumed that his conversational volley was as good as an invitation into his quarters. The workbench was filled with clutter; an assortment of stabilizer discs, half of which had the imprecise red markings. There was also a board about the width of her torso, upon which he'd laid a grid in black binding tape.

She fingered one of the red-painted pieces and sat across from him.

"What are you doing?" She cursed herself almost as soon as she opened her mouth; when John was in one of these moods, asking a question tied you up for arns. She ignored the thought that maybe she didn't _really_ regret it all that much.

"Makin' a checkers set." He continued painting the last disc red, as if this pronouncement weren't entirely incomprehensible.

"What does it...do?" She examined the piece she was holding. It didn't look like anything special.

"Doesn't _do_ anything, darlin'. It's what you do _with_ it."

Aeryn sighed, long-suffering. "Of _course._ Even a weapon doesn't _do_ anything unless you do something with it."

"It's a game," he said, watching her from the corner of his eye. "It teaches strategy. You'd like it, it's like a battlefield without all the blood."

Aeryn gave him a look that she hoped _clearly_ expressed that a battlefield without blood was pretty frelling pathetic.

"Okay, so it's for practice," he said, laughing. "Training." He blew air on the last piece he'd painted, apparently convinced that it would make it dry more quickly. Aeryn suspected otherwise; the stuff smelled like the paint they used in battle camouflage, which dried through an emulsion process.

"It's even Peacekeeper colors," he said. "Wanna play?"

She opened her mouth to say no, but he caught her eye and held it for several long microts. If she said no, what would she do? Go back to her quarters? To Command? She could go speak to Pilot, but he was busy with Moya's advancing pregnancy. And truth be told, she was enjoying herself here.

She didn't want to talk about the false Earth; about the tenderness of his hands on her body, about the way she felt when he abandoned her there. But she wanted to be near him nevertheless, which probably meant that she should go.

"Yes, I'll play," she said.

John didn't hide his surprise very well, but he set up the board without saying something stupid.

"Do you want red or black?"

"Black," she said decisively.

"Big surprise there." He turned the board so the black pieces were nearest to her.

"Now, the rules are simple. You get one move per turn. You can only move forward or sideways, not back. Whenever one of my pieces is next to yours, and there's a blank square on the other side, you can jump it and take it off the board. That means killing it."

He grinned up at her and she retorted, "I'd figured that out, thanks."

He laughed. "If you can jump another piece from the square you land on afterwards, you can take that one, too."

"So any of the pieces can take any of the other pieces?"

"Yeah."

"That's ridiculous, Crichton. In any battle there are going to be soldiers who are more skilled than the others. Positional advantages can be overcome. They're not all equal."

"Ah, now you're talkin' chess. Afraid all I've got are checkers pieces." He flipped one of the red pieces in the air. She assumed he'd just said something to refute her statement, but frelled if she knew what it meant.

"Now, once you get one piece all the way across the board, you put one of your captured pieces on top of it. That's called 'king me.'"

"And then the game is over?"

"No, the game's over when you've captured all the other side's pieces."

"But the object of war is usually to obtain political control, not kill everyone on the other side."

"Aeryn, it's not -- it's a game! 'King me' means that piece can go any direction it wants." He shook his head. "And you know as well as I do that sometimes, genocide is _exactly_ the point of a war."

This was getting dangerously close to becoming a serious conversation. She shrugged and suggested, "Are we ready to play?"

John twitched a smile and said, "If you think you can take me."

"Oh, I can take you," she assured him. "I can take you with my eyes closed."

This turned out to be a gross over-statement, as John made short work of all her pieces over the course of three separate games.

Following the last, Aeryn was left staring at the board in wonderment. "How -- I had the _advantage!_ How did you _do_ that?" Her last four pieces had disappeared from the board as if by magic, in just one turn.

John slumped back in his chair and rested his hands behind his head. "Sometimes, Miss Shoot-First-Think-Later, it pays to plan ahead."

Aeryn scowled and began setting up the board again.

"Coming back for more, are we?" he teased.

She glared. "Gloating is not an attractive look on you."

John's grin widened, and he ran his thumb along his bottom lip. She struggled not to react. _Frell_ him.

No, on second thought, _don't_ frell him.

Her hands were steady as she made her first move.

The game began with a few feints on both sides, as their pieces moved nearer one another. This time, however, when John made what appeared to be a stupid mistake, she withheld from immediately taking his piece. After studying the board, she realized it was a trap, a clever sacrifice of one of his pieces to lure her into setting him up to take several of hers. She moved a different piece and left John's target as it was, since it was in no immediate danger.

It wasn't that she couldn't think strategically. All Peacekeepers learned that as children, or they were never accepted into Commando service. It just tended to get in the way of her nice, simple life, that's all.

John, wisely, made no comment.

The teasing atmosphere was gone from the room. They made several more plays in silence. She took two pieces in a row, and John sighed.

"My dad taught me to play checkers when I was just a little kid."

Aeryn looked up sharply. "You miss him," she said. She was surprised at the insight.

He laughed bitterly. "Those bastards," he said. "Messing with my head like that. I believed it was him, you have to understand. And when I found out it wasn't..."

"I should think it would be a relief. That we weren't actually in that situation."

"Yeah, okay. But you've got to understand, Aeryn. It was _my dad._ "

He made a move, taking one of her pieces, but carelessly, putting his in a position to be taken. This time it wasn't a trap. "I don't even know what my father looks like," she said. She didn't think it would help. "I know his name, of course. But I wouldn't know him if I passed him in a crowded market."

"I'm sorry," he said.

She thought for a moment. "So am I." She took John's piece, and another after that, landing squarely on his side of the board. She smiled. "King me."

From the corridor, Chiana's voice startled them. "Sounds kinkoid," she said, laughing. In her hands were several slim bottles that Aeryn was pleased to realize contained fellip nectar. She hadn't had fellip nectar in over a cycle, long before Moya.

"Hey, Chiana," John said.

Chiana sauntered into the room, scattering pieces as she hopped up onto the workbench. It just figured that the game Aeryn was actually winning was the one that got ruined. "Watcha doin'?" She opened a bottle and handed it to John.

"Playing feckers," Aeryn answered, taking her offered fellip nectar bottle and breaking the glass top on the edge of the table.

John choked on his own fellip nectar. " _Checkers._ "

Aeryn shrugged. "Whatever."

"Be careful," Chiana warned. "Fellip nectar hurts like frell when it comes out your nose."

John stared at his bottle a moment in incomprehension. Then he looked up at Aeryn, a little wide-eyed. "Fellip nectar is _blue?_ You didn't tell me it was _blue._ You said it tasted like beer!"

"It does. Don't you think so?"

Frowning, he took another drink, which he swirled around his mouth a little. He looked ridiculous. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Looks like it should be fruity, though."

"What's beer?" Chiana asked, guzzling half a bottle.

"Don't drink so fast," Aeryn complained. "We haven't had any of that since we ended up on Moya."

Chiana shrugged. "We just got loads of food on the commerce planet. There's a lot more fellip nectar in the Center Chamber."

"How did you manage that? We didn't have much currency."

Chiana grinned impishly. "D'Argo discovered that I have some uses after all."

"Please tell me we're not being chased by anyone."

"Oh, Aeryn. I'm far too good for that." She slid to the floor with a thump.

John drained the last of his bottle. "In that case," he said, belching loudly, "I suggest we go grab some more."

On their way out the door, he pulled her aside a microt. "Thanks," he said softly.

There was nothing for her to say other than, "You're welcome."


End file.
